Adam abused his authority

Adam Abused His Authority17Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:“Cursed is the ground for your sake;In toil you shall eat of itAll the days of your life.18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,And you shall eat the herb of the field.19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat breadTill you return to the ground,For out of it you were taken;For dust you are,And to dust you shall return.”20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.21 Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them (Gen. 3:17-21).

First, Adam abused his authority, and he and his descendants suffered the consequences. Second, in so doing, he simultaneously nullified the one purpose for the Garden experience.

Remember Genesis 2:15: "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it."The word for "put" is Strong's H5117: "A primitive root; to rest, that is, settle down...." One implication is that Adam has had a more difficult life or journey to this point, but that understanding takes us down a different path. Let us just understand it as God giving Adam a place to settle down and enjoy the fruit of his labor.God's instructions to the man might be better understood as "to serve and protect" the Garden. The word translated as "tend," is Strong's H5647: "A primitive root; to work (in any sense); by implication to serve, till..." Adam will serve the land, the Garden, and it will serve him.The word translated as "keep" is Strong's H8104, "A primitive root; properly to hedge about (as with thorns), that is, guard; generally to protect, attend to, etc...." We might wonder what threat exists to the Garden. Creation was the ordering of the universe, the transition from chaos to order. Chaos is the threat, and Adam is the protector.

Here in Genesis 3, we see that Adam's first abuse of authority was in allowing the serpent, a representative of chaos, into the Garden. This failure proved fatal to the existence of the Garden on earth, as well as to Adam and Eve, but it did not have to be that way.Adam's second abuse of authority, and the fault that carried the most severe punishment, was disobedience to the source of his authority by changing allegiance.

We often see this betrayal by those in authority throughout history and into today. Someone is given position of authority, either by someone higher in an organization or by those who have chosen him/her to lead in some capacity. To betray a trust is to decrease order by increasing chaos. This happens every day - the politician accepting money from a special interest group at the expense of the public; a business person substituting lower quality in a product to the harm of the customer; an employee embezzling; a person in a position of authority abusing someone over whom he/she holds a trust; etc.

Adam could have refused, just as Eve could have refused. What evil does is to tempt the self to a better outcome, and this is always at the expense of another. Even those "private sins" that are not seen and appear to have no victim leave a scar on the character of the individual.As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, ships traveling together must not only steer clear of one another, they must also maintain their inner workings so that they are able to control their movements. By disobeying his Commander, Adam wrecked not only his own vessel, but everyone else's.

Betrayal of the source of his power was devastating for Adam and Eve and all of Creation. We might wonder that a single act of disobedience could or even should have such a wide ranging consequence. We must understand that the act of partaking of the forbidden fruit essentially destroyed the unity of all that existed.Remember the original command, “'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion...'" (Gen. 1:28). Mankind was to fill Creation, bringing all under dominion in the likeness of the Garden.

Adam's disobedience nullified the one purpose for the Garden experience, establishing and maintaining the oneness of all things, their unity under God.

While Adam served and protected the Garden, looking after its interests and well-being, he was also ensuring his own security. When Adam sought something for his own benefit that was not part of the contract, he stepped out from under his source of authority. There was chaos because there were now two masters, God and the serpent. This sudden loss of order split the universe in two. Everything placed under Adam was now dependent on Adam, but he no longer had a base from which he could restore order. His world still had what God had created, but with no basis for supporting order, "thorns and thistles" were the literal evidence of the return to chaos. "The whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now" (Rom. 8:18-22).

The Garden of Eden is an object lesson of the unity of all of Creation. Everything came from the same beginning and all parts are interconnected. Although this is still a fact of all existence, the truth is much harder to see in our present day world. Each person determines his/her actions from a separate viewpoint rather than from the perspective of the well-being of the whole. There is no acknowledged source of all things, only the "blind watchmaker" (evolution), where the order seen in natural selection is based on the accident of a natural creation. The order here is arbitrary, determined by the whim of the fittest. This is chaos. Order no longer has a definition, and this, too, is chaos. The first two chapters of the Bible speak of the dominion of order. Chaos reigns until the last two chapters of the Bible, the restoration of order. We live in the books of disorder in between.

Note that we have been given the "laws of nature," predictable rules that form the basis of the things of the world. Gravity is consistent, and evaporation, and rain (or not), and many other natural events. These laws are fixed and cannot be violated without consequences. We defy these laws at our own peril. If we artificially disobey a law, there are consequences. Miracles are the exceptions to the laws of nature. Miracles are what science can never explain, because they have no basis in the laws that govern the universe. Miracles are by the grace of God. And so are the laws of nature, the backup system of order that replaced the unity of Creation in Eden.

God had given the name Adam to His first created man (Gen. 5:2 KJV). Giving a name is symbolic of authority over someone, as with God giving Abram a new name, or the Chaldeans giving Daniel and the Hebrews new names (Daniel 1:7).In Genesis 3:20, Adam gives Eve her name. Adam still has dominion, but his domain is now much smaller. Note, too, how Adam had blamed God

The next verse shows God's care and concern for Adam and Eve. He does not clothe them in the "best robe" like the Prodigal Son. God makes a sacrifice for them to provide animal skins to replace His covering that they had lost.​The Creation of the universe had been from a heart of love. That heart still extends that love for acceptance.Next article 5/16